01 · The situation
A good business without a dependable route to new customers.
The founder was excellent in client meetings and delivery, but business development disappeared whenever project work became busy. Revenue therefore followed a familiar cycle of pressure, activity, new work and silence.
The business offered several related services. Prospects often struggled to understand where to start, while staff were reluctant to approach new contacts without a strong reason.
02 · The challenge
Translate potential into a sales function people can run.
- ✓Make the offer easier to understand and easier to buy.
- ✓Create regular activity that could survive busy delivery periods.
- ✓Use the founder at the right point, rather than throughout the whole process.
- ✓Measure quality conversations instead of vanity marketing figures.
03 · The commercial plan
Start with the market, then design the activity around it.
Find the entry offer
Shape a low-friction review around the urgent issue clients recognise, providing a natural route into the wider service.
Segment the audience
Separate target businesses by size, trigger and decision-maker so the message reflects their situation.
Create the conversation
Develop concise outreach, discovery questions, follow-up assets and a clear call-booking path.
Build the weekly rhythm
Allocate protected prospecting time, response handling and pipeline review to named people.
“A sales process should make the right action easier. If it only creates more administration, it has been designed for the report—not the people doing the work.”John Wicks
04 · Implementation
Put useful structure around real weekly activity.
The exact mix would be adjusted around the team, sales cycle and available capacity. The working system could include:
- 1A single-page campaign for each priority audience.
- 2Short email and LinkedIn sequences with human review.
- 3A simple qualification framework before founder involvement.
- 4Follow-up tasks for every meaningful response.
- 5Weekly learning captured and fed back into the message.
05 · What changes
The business gains commercial control.
A clearer proposition that prospects can repeat internally.
More consistent conversations across the month.
Founder time focused on qualified commercial discussions.
A pipeline the team can see, discuss and improve.
These are the operational improvements this approach is designed to create—not promised financial results.
John's takeaway